It’s that time of year again. Unfortunately I’m not talking about Christmas. What I am talking about is yearly review time, that once-a-year opportunity to sit down with your manager and discuss your performance the past year.
Some companies have formal yearly reviews that are very structured and have little surprises. Other companies may have reviews almost at random with little structure. While structured reviews seem to be an “easier” process to go through because there is less chance of surprises, keeping track of your successes and preparing properly will help in any scenario.
Yearly reviews can be stressful, but planning ahead and knowing what you have done to provide value for the company or organization can really take some of the stress out of the experience.
A few tips for yearly reviews:
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Plan Ahead – The earlier you start planning for your review, the better. In an ideal world, you would have spent time getting feedback from my your manager each month, or at least quarterly, so that there are no surprises. Making a list of your “successes” over the past year is a good idea. If you can explain how you directly and indirectly improved the company, you are going to have a lot of leverage in your yearly review.
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Do Your Research – If you plan on asking for a raise, make sure you do your research. It’s a good idea to look into what other people are making in comparable positions at your current company or another company. If you want a raise you may need more ammo than a list of successes at your current company; having figures of what other companies are paying will only help.
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Keep the Company in mind – Sometimes raises are out of your control. If a company is being squeezed for profits and people are worried about losing their jobs, it may not be the time to press for a higher raise. If this describes your company, it may not matter that you came in early and stayed late a hundred times this year and went out of your way to help others with their job responsibilities; there just may be no ‘room’ for raises. Of course this will also vary depending on where you are in the company and how vital or specialized your position is. If other companies are offering you jobs for 10%+, then asking for a raise may be the right thing to do.
One thing I tried to do this year is keep my review in mind from the beginning. Tracking what I spend my time doing, including any special projects I take part in, has helped me as I’ve started preparing for my review. While I have never seriously considered leaving my company, there is always value in networking with other headhunters and knowing what skills are in demand in the marketplace.
Half the challenge can be communicating with managers and figuring out what you can be doing better. Executing on that feedback can create strong examples of how you have succeeded in the past year.
Do you have reviews in your workplace? What do you do to prepare?
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We always have an annual review. My boss always thinks it’s funny to push a box of Kleenex towards each one of us before they start. Hopefull it goes well this year. It always has so far!
@GregatClubThrifty Haha that’s hilarious! In my opinion there should never be surprises at review time, if the company is doing reviews the right way.
I find that I always get really good performance reviews with my boos, not because I am a stellar worker, but because my colleagues are so poor that by me just performing my role I look great in comparison.
Great tips though!
@MonsterPiggyBank Unbelievable….is your company hiring??? ;)
@DC @ Young Adult Money Sorry about my atrocious typing – WTF is a boos? You wouldn’t want to work where I work, despite getting good reviews, it can be a hard slog if you have a work ethic.
I hated those reviews, and the dice were loaded from the start anyway… I prefer a casual talk once a week or month about projects, and letting them know I am still motivated.
@RFIndependence I like that saying -> “the dice were loaded form the start.” My company does both but raises are based primarily on the year-end reviews.
Great tips! Thankfully I don’t have to go through these anymore. At my old company we had quarterly reviews like this on top of an annual one and it was always a pain in the neck. I think a big key is being prepared before hand and have reasonable expectations.
@FrugalRules Quarterly sounds like overkill, and reasonable expectations are so important.
My review is in June thankfully! I always try and write down what I’ve accomplished.
@SenseofCents I really wish our reviews didn’t coincide with Christmas, but that’s just how it is. I need to get even better at writing down my accomplishments throughout the year. I did a pretty good job this year, but can always do a better job at it.
I don’t have reviews, since it’s only me who does my job, I have had them in previous jobs and they sort of suck but in a way were great because i usually felt pretty good about myself leaving.
@PlungedinDebt Yeah they can be good and bad, and I think a lot of it is how they are structured and who the person is who is conducting the review.
My first few years with the company they did yearly reviews, but I’m a long termer at this point (been here for 14 years) and I haven’t had a real review in years. I think they know who I am and what I do at the company, and the results speak for themselves. It’s also a deal where I’m kind of my own department and my bosses don’t really need to give me reviews I guess.. Can’t say I’m disappointed about not having regular reviews, as long as they keep paying me, and giving me semi-regular increases. :)
@moneymatters Is your department hiring? : )
Great tips! My company does reviews but they are not related to raises. I wish they were.
@deaconhayes Ours are definitely tied to raises, though I am preparing for a bit of a letdown in case I only get a slight increase this year after really putting forth a big effort.
My work is reviewed through results achieved. It’s pretty much ongoing so I have to keep it in mind day to day.
@Veronica @ Pelican on Money There are definitely some jobs that are tied to results. In my job I am so removed from sales or performance of the company it comes down to other factors.
I wish the company I worked for did reviews. It’s a small family owned company and we’ve never had one. I think a lot of problems would be solved if they just sat down with us and told what they like and don’t like about our performance.
@JustinatTheFrugalPath You should recommend reviews ;) I realize that would be a difficult thing to implement, though, since they’ve never done them.
@DC @ Young Adult Money One of our managers attempted to implement reviews. Everyone moaned about how unfair they were so she quit the reviews and has since found a new job. I really liked the reviews though, they can help a great deal with issues.
I like the plan of keeping track of your own work so that you can use it as part of your review.
The last corporation I worked for made a huge deal out of annual reviews. We had to fill in a ton of online questionnaires about all kinds of categories, and rate our own performance, and most times our managers rarely read them because if they had a team of 10 or 20 people reporting to them they fell asleep reading them all.
I did use my review a few times to get promotions.
Raises were annual and we didn’t need to ask for them specifically.
@TacklingOurDebt I have been trying really hard to be good about keeping track of my work, but I need to organize it better. I have it in a bunch of note pads and one excel file that I should have updated more often :/ At least it’s a start.
Honestly, I wrote over 2,000 words in my self-evaluation just to make sure it was all recorded. I have a feeling my manager won’t fully read what I wrote, but at least I can reference different things.
I don’t have a review in the typical sense, but my goverment job gets a “grade ” every year. They have a reviewer select so many random charts and I get a grade of how well I did on required elements of the exam and management of certain diseases. I got a 93 this year, and I wanted 100, but Oh well. It is not tied to salary in anyway, but I guess I could get let go if I wasn’t up to snuff.
@Eyesonthedollar That’s really unfortunate because I’m sure that it depends on the reviewer many of the times. But 93 is pretty dang good! I bet they avoid going much higher than that even if you do everything perfectly.
I had my first review with my new employer this year. My job is hard to exceed expectations I feel… I’ll come up with something for next yera though.
Yes my organization does reviews which we do yearly. It’s important to realize that this is just another time to shine and to reiterate what your goals are and where you want to improve with your boss. The more he/she can see that you are investing not only in the company but your growth the better prepared you will be when you ask for that raise. Great post. Mr.CBB
We have notional reviews, but because most of the members of staff in my workplaces are permanent (literally can’t be fired unless they are woefully negligent, not just bad at their job) our reviews are a bit less worrisome. On the downside, we can’t ask for a raise beyond our agreement.